I'm afraid Benelux is the unreliable company I referred to in my original post; I had used them quite a bit until December 2015. At that time I was advised they had a problem sourcing the boxes to ship the bottles to me. Then in January 2016 I was told that my bottles, worth several thousand pounds, had been stolen during a break in at their premises. During the next 16 months they have failed to provide me with a copy of the police report, any documentation from their insurance admitting their claim or even confirmation of the amount they claimed in relation to my stolen bottles. Needless to say I have not received a single penny of compensation.

I have used mailboxes a fair bit and agree with your comments regarding their costs which seem to vary substantially from branch to branch.

I'm really sorry to hear about your bad experience. I work for a courier company (not Benelux!) and would be horrified to have treated one of our customers in the way you've described.

I can't actually help much with your original request. I spent quite a long time looking for a reliable packing and shipping company to handle wine and port bottles bought at auction. I had so little luck that I normally now collect my wines in person - which also means I get to see some very interesting parts of the UK and elsewhere in the world.

Are any of the on-going clients of Benelux Shipping able to confirm their physical address? Unfortunately, their website, beneluxshipping.com, fails to provide this basic information. If anyone on the site happens to this I would really appreciate it if they could share it with me. If you don't know it please ask them.... If they are unwilling to provide it, I leave to you to draw your own conclusion why!

I am absolutely certain that this company has no connection with the Benelux Shipping I have had the problem with.

Having undertaken a lot of research the company I have had the problems with is a sole trader called Michael Vaus who is based in Wellington. He operates under the name "David" and through the website www.beneluxshipping.com. I have manged to get a fair sized dossier on on his operation and if anyone else has had issues with "David" please feel free to contact me.

I have spoken to the Hull based company and they have mentioned that the similarity of name has caused issues for them in the past.

Just to clarify the Wellington, Somerset trading details are as follows:-

I must confess that when writing a response to the original post I was going to ask whether the carrier in question began with the letter 'B' as I kind guessed that you might be referring to them.

A second confession is that a good friend of mine (known to a few people on this Forum) suffered the same problem as you-namely, that he was told that his case of F2000 (or it might have been F2003) were among a number of cases that had been taken in a burglary. He told me this just after the time and I must admit I then forgot about it (thinking that he would the receive value of the goods as the person in question had told me on a number of occasions previously that my goods were insured). However when I spoke to my friend a while ago, it came up in conversation again and that he had heard nothing further on it from Benelux. However, being a busy and non confrontational sort of person, my friend had not really pursued. However, I was appalled and disgusted and having already started to use them less and less (due to their timeliness and pricing vagaries not to mention some other odd habits) have not used them in the last seven months. This does limit my buying as unlike Alex I have less opportunity these days to visit the auction houses personally but so be it.

As a footnote to this one of our number on the Forum still uses them from time to time (I'll leave it to them to make further comment if they wish) but I understand that the person at the centre of all this is looking to retire soon and so you may have limited time to catch up them before they disappear.